A bill demanding student seats on merger committee was withdrawn at yesterday’s SGA meeting.
A resolution demanding student representation on committees that would plan how to merge of the dance and theate departments — if approved by the University Senate — was withdrawn last night after SGA legislators said it seemed the bill wouldn’t change anything before the senate votes on the issue.
As the plan stands, 18 committees would be charged with laying out the new structure and curriculum of the proposed School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. An overarching committee would have one undergraduate member and one graduate student member, both of whom would be non-voting. The other 17 committees have no student representatives, and other students aren’t allowed into committee meetings, which drove Arts and Humanities legislator Kate Richard to write the bill.
“Students in the theater and dance departments are so involved at every level,” including technical work, stage managing and design, she said. “They should have a say in what happens.”
The proposed merger of the dance and theatre departments, which will be put to a vote in today’s senate meeting, comes on the heels of a slew of similar proposals — administrators suggested merging the colleges of chemical and life sciences and computer, mathematical and physical sciences last semester, and a proposed consolidation of diversity departments was shot down earlier this year — that have received criticism from faculty and students who feel they’re being left out of the process.
But graduate student senator and Graduate Student Government official Aaron Tobiason, who originally approached the SGA about getting on board with the issue, asked the undergraduate legislators to withdraw the resolution, because “at this point, it’s moot,” he said. Although there may be problems with the committee process, he added, the senate floor isn’t the right place to air them.
“I was trying to get as much student support behind me as possible to get the College of Arts and Humanities to consider revising the plan,” said Tobiason, who backed a similar GSG measure. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, talking with a lot of my colleagues on the [Senate Executive Committee] and the senate. At this point, it’s fairly certain to me that approval of this merger is certain. … I don’t think that this is a discussion that can happen cleanly on the floor of the senate.”
Undergraduate senator Jonathan Sachs also foresees a problem with raising student representation concerns to the full senate.
Sachs said he brought up the issue of student representation at the meeting of the senate’s most powerful committee — the SEC — last week. But he said it doesn’t look like there’s much recourse for undergraduates seeking representation.
“I think from what I understand, the senate can’t amend the document,” Sachs said. “It’s tough because it can’t be amended and you can’t strike it down.”
The SGA resolution, which never made it to vote at last night’s meeting, mentioned the need for student voices in four committees in particular: the Season Selection (which selects shows for performances), New Technology, Artists-in-Residence and Performance/Production committees.
“It would have been sort of a symbolic stand,” Tobiason said of the attempted resolution. “I feel that my efforts would probably be better directed toward making certain that going forward, future mergers that are considered are dealt with in a different fashion.”
Senior staff writer Derby Cox contributed to this report.
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